For many, the August bank holiday is associated with festivals, with Reading/Leeds and Creamfields probably the most famous. But for me, it’s all about Bolton Food and Drink Festival.
Celebrating its 21st birthday in 2026, Bolton Food and Drink Festival is about a few of my favourite things – food, drink, music and Bolton.
This year, there are over 180 stalls, chef demos from the likes of Marco Pierre White, James Martin and Nisha Katona, and even live music from The Real Thing and Liberty X.
Mrs Molloy and I made the very short trip into Bolton town centre after work on the opening day of the festival.
Spoilt for choice with the veritable smorgasbord of food stalls on offer, we decided to share a few bits.
We could smell the Texas BBQ Guys before we saw their bright orange trailer on Victoria Square and I’m a sucker for Texas BBQ so didn’t have to think twice about where our first stop would be.
We wanted the loaded fries with brisket and pulled pork they’d sold out of brisket. They were also fresh out of cheesesteak, so we just opted for a double helping of pulled pork.
Along with the meat, the fries were also loaded up with pickled red onions, crinkle cut gherkins, BBQ sauce and Cheez Whiz. It was filthy in the best possible way. The pulled pork was melt-in-the-mouth and each forkful had a different explosion of flavour combinations, with the gherkins and pickled onions bringing a sharpness that complemented the smokiness of the BBQ sauce.
After walking all the way to the last couple of stalls on Deansgate, we looped back round and got a typically delicious cinnamon-topped pastel de nata from Th3 Guys and a freshly baked macaroon from Elevents Macaroons on Oxford Street, that ended up being a surprise highlight.
After I chose Texas BBQ, Mrs Molloy got to pick our second savoury dish and went for Korean-style corn dogs from That’s So Corny, just outside the old Magistrates’ Court. We tried a half-cheese, half-sausage ‘dog’, drizzled in ketchup and mustard.
It’s hard to go wrong with anything deep fried and the method of cooking led to a spectacular cheese pull. It was much harder to share than the loaded fries and despite being on a skewer, I still managed to get ketchup and mustard all over my hands.
It was around half the price of the Texas BBQ Guys and that seemed fair as it was more of a snack rather than a main, but it was really tasty.
On the other side of Le Mans Crescent is Bolton Food and Drink Festival staple The Dutch Fishmen. Every year that I’ve been, I see tons of people walking around with their spirally ‘tornado chips’ but, for whatever reason, never actually tried until this year.
They’ve managed to find the perfect sweet spot between a chip and a crisp – razor thin and crispy on the outside but still impossibly fluffy within. We got ours with peri-salt and mayonnaise but I think they’d still be delicious straight out of the fryer.
Just a stone’s throw away from that stall is Love Crepes, where we got our final dish of the evening – a crepe topped with Kinder sauce, melted chocolate and a piece of Kinder chocolate. This wasn’t the best crepe I’ve ever had to be honest and there didn’t seem to be any wooden cutlery on offer, which made sharing it very difficult indeed.
Friday’s headliner was Starsailor frontman James Walsh but we were predominantly there for founding member of Catfish & The Bottlemen, Billy Bibby.
Bibby played guitar on Catfish’s debut album The Balcony and he played the album in full here, along with an acoustic cover of Morning Glory by Oasis (a similar arrangement to when Noel Gallagher has played it solo) and a couple Catfish’s biggest hits from after he left the band, in 7 and Longshot.
Although Bibby’s voice isn’t quite as strong as Van McCann’s, hearing those songs in a stripped back, acoustic style was actually really cool and a great way to end our evening.
It’s a shame that the weather hasn’t really been great for this year’s festival but with two days still to go, I’d still recommend getting down and supporting local businesses if you’re short of bank holiday plans.
As a side note, if any of the traders read this, can we please stop with the AI slop posters and menu graphics?
Leave a Reply